Rubrique : Peuples &
Monde
mardi 21 février 2006
Historical Contextualisation of "Social
Capital" Discourse and the Dilemma Facing Social Scientist
Vera Vratusa
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Appearance of the social capital concept in historical context and
functions of the social capital functionalistic conceptualization
In the encyclopedic literature dealing with the history of the ’’social
capital’’ concept (Smith, M. K., 2001), its first appearance is attributed
to Hanifan Lyda Judson (1916). In the paper ’The rural school community centre’
that was published in the middle of the World war I, he used this term in the
sense of cultivation of a good will, fellowship, sympathy and social
intercourse among those that ’make up a social unit’. He noticed that mutually
trusting and cooperative informal social relations in local community groups
enhance educational attainment.
In just cited and other similar historical accounts is recorded the fact
that the term social capital came into widespread usage in the second half of
the last decade of the XX century, but this fact is left unexplained.
Insufficiently elaborated remained also the difference between two opposed
conceptualizations of social capital.
The first conceptualization defines cultural and social capital in critical
and conflict theory terms as a vehicle of social inequality reproduction. Such
conceptualization is elaborated first of all by continental authors like French
sociologist Bourdieu (1983) in the nineteen eighties. This is the era of the
first phase of neo-liberal ’’structural reforms’’ imposed by transnational
financial capital organized in the World Bank (WB) and the International
monetary fund (IMF), after the US Federal Reserves’ inspired abolishment of
golden standard in 1971 and heightening of interest rates on debt repayment in
1980 (Vratusa, Vera, 2002) .
The second conceptualization of social capital is the functionalist one,
formulated in the consensual terms of shared norms of reciprocity and
trustworthiness within social networks connecting individuals. It is developed
primarily by the US authors like Putnam (1995) in the nineteen nineties,. This
was the period in which the socially disintegrative effects of the first phase
of the ’’structural adjustment programs’’ began to be felt not only in eastern
former real socialist countries, but also in the western real capitalist ones.
The main thesis of this paper is that in the concrete social circumstances
of the last few years of the twentieth century one should look for the reasons
why the functionalist interpretation of social capital became so popular among
one part of the scientific community members. Precisely in this period it
became clear even to the most ardent theoreticians and practitioners of the
neo-liberal privatization of state and social property like George Soros
(1999), a billionaire who appropriated his wealth through financial
speculation, that ’’fundamentalist’’ extending of the market mechanism to all
domains of social life has the potential of destroying not only social
solidarity networks but also capitalist system of social relations in general.
Since late nineteen nineties the bursting of the speculative bubble ten times
exceeding the world real economy, is threatening to turn the worldwide
recession into a depression. Now that the disintegration of the global
capitalist system is threatening, the worried owners of controlling share
packages of the biggest transnational corporations and financial institutions,
triggered the alarm. They are calling for capital controls and safety valves
for the disastrous effects of the ’’free market’’ like ’’social capital’’ in
order to defend the long-term interests of the bourgeoisie.
Instead of the promised prosperity for all, the structural adjustment
programs of the WB imposing instant privatization of all forms of collective
property, deregulation, floating currencies’ exchange rates and introduction of
the so called free market competition and trade, led to mass unemployment and
unproductive financial speculations. In these circumstances Francis Fukuyama’s
1989 euphoric announcement of the capitalist free competitive market economy
and representative democracy as the finally realized ’’end of history’’ form of
social reproduction organization (Fukuyama Francis, 1989), needed to be
amended. Just a decade later, in the year of the criminal NATO bombardment with
projectiles enriched with depleted uranium of the country having strong remains
of social property at the strategically important Balkan crossroads, the same
author embraced the consensualistic conceptualization of social capital.
Fukuyama proposed it as a theoretical framework and mitigation technique for
the IMF’s ’’second generation’’ of economic reforms’ realization (Fukuyama,
Francis, 1999).
Precisely proposed ’’cure’’, informal system of social values and relations
of mutuality accepted by a group of people without legal sanction, proponents
of the so called modernization used to criticize in earlier decades as
irrational remainder of traditionalism threatening the efficacious market
competition. Fukuyama now rehabilitates these pre- and not-capitalist norms and
relations under the label of social capital as the facilitator of social life
since they spontaneously regulate what is not or can not be successfully
regulated through formal norms. The neo-liberal utilitarian conception of human
nature, prevents Fukuyama to realize what Coleman understood (1988), starting
from the more critical perspective, that social co-operation is public good and
that it can not be produced in a sufficient amount by private competitors on
the market. Fukuyama underlines the need for utilization of cooperation
produced by independent and egoistic individual as private instrument for
realization of his or her aims. Social capital is for him ’’glue’’ that holds
the otherwise centrifugal structures of the market together, and reduces the
transaction costs of the supposedly best possible free market competition form
of the economic reproduction organization by resolving conflict situations.
Social capital as ownership form label
When social capital is the theme of discussion in Serbia and other former
Yugoslav socialist republics, one must always keep in mind the fact that these
two words were introduced into the first laws on privatization at the end of
nineteen eighties, in order to label the totality of property in social
ownership that was being ’’transformed’’ through these laws. The laws on privatization,
namely, contrary to the still legally binding constitution in Serbia, allowed
that this specific form of property regime no more excludes the possibility of
’’abusus’’, alienation or monopolization through privatization. In the first
cycle of WB and IMF economic reforms it was exactly this collective social and
state property that was and still is targeted for elimination through
privatization. In the second phase transnational capital wants to use the
intangible social capital to diminish the expenses of its rule.
In conditions of disruption of social reproduction process and social
disintegration caused by the ’’shock therapy’’ privatization and deregulation,
manifested in increased inequality, poverty, crime, sickness and death rate,
and decreased economic growth, level of education and innovation rate, along
with civic disengagement from social associations and voting participation,
’’social capital’’ is invoked by the partisans of the neo-liberal social
relations’ transformation strategy with specific aim in mind. Its function is
to mitigate social disintegration caused by privatization through the attempt
to tape integrative forces of trust and cooperative spirit within the private
corporation and between it and its customers and partners. The expected gain
for a firm that mobilizes free of charge social capital of its employees is
manifold. They include the lowering of the turnover rates, reducing severance
costs and hiring and training expenses, avoiding discontinuities associated
with frequent personnel changes, maintaining valuable organizational knowledge,
greater coherence of action due to organizational stability and shared
understanding (Cohen and Prusak, 2001 : 10) In the similar way, extended
family, friends and neighborhood networking and mutual help are implicitly and
explicitly suggested as the solution for solving deteriorating standard of
living problems after public networks of social security, health care,
education and local government are being increasingly dismantled.
Choices confronting social scientists
Social scientists are confronted with theoretic-methodological choices
concerning the conceptualization of social capital that have the opposite
practico-political implications. Should they follow the agenda set by the
ideological representatives of the increasingly speculative, parasitic and
aggressive transnational financial capital and its organizations like the WB
and IMF ? Should they put spontaneously evolving social solidarity and
mutual cooperation and reciprocity values and norms within face to face
informal community networks, which somehow survived the invasion of robbery
privatization, in the service of the preservation and accumulation of private
profits and mitigation of the disastrous effects of elimination of all forms of
collective property ? Should social scientists on the contrary choose to
contribute to the social consciousness rising in general and of direct
producers of social wealth in particular, that it is the elementary condition
of their simultaneous economic, political and social emancipation from wage
slavery to retain, if there remains any, or attain, the control or social
ownership over the main material and spiritual forces and relations of life
reproduction ?
If the social scientist retains the term ’’capital’’, interpreting it as a
material ’’thing’’ or intangible ’’quality’’ ’’capable of generating gains’’,
instead as the historically specific relation of exploitation or socially
produced surplus value private appropriation, we can infer that s/he chose the
first alternative. S/he namely diverges the attention of the victims of robbery
privatization from active resistance to coercive and unjust capitalist social
relations that inherently reproduce poverty and unequal access to educational,
health care, social security, water, electricity and other public services.
S/he on the contrary suggests to these victims of capital accumulation to
attempt to diminish their structurally reproduced physical and spiritual
impoverishment, through engagement in community informal self-help associations
as substitutes and ’’happiness equivalents’’.
Uncritical use of the term social capital is accompanied by the moralizing
criterion for determination which concrete set of informal norms and relations
constitute social capital by their ’’good’’ effects for postulated society in
general. In this sense informal norms and relations of criminal organization
would not be considered social capital. In the similar way was criticized the
practice throughout the period of self-management for instance, of informal
’’connections’’ of enterprise technocracy with the party and state bureaucracy,
ensuring privileged access to credits and other key reproduction components.
These connections significantly determined unequal chances on the emerging
market of respective enterprises in social ownership, more or less in reality
transformed into a group property,. Such moralistic approach to definition of
social capital conveniently forgets or attempts to embellish the fact that the
materialized economic capital produces bad results for exploited and oppressed
classes. It systematically produces in fact harmful results especially in the
era of the transformation of welfare into warfare states and the revival of
classical colonial conquest of the cheap raw materials, labor force and markets
by parasitic renter financial capital.
Does not in such era, taking over the concept of social capital and
accompanying research instruments from the WB and IMF, boil down to putting
one’s expert power in the service of transnational corporations’ extraction of
extra-profits ? Aren’t in this way TNC’s control packages owners and
managers helped to subordinate still not fully commoditized sectors of social
life and their mutual solidarity networks to the imperatives of the profit
accumulation enabling thus further lowering of the labor costs below the
subsistence level ? Does not taking over and retention of the new fad
imply as well apologetic presentation of the alienated and alienating
historical form of antagonistic confrontation of use and exchange value as
unavoidable and eternal, together with inequality of chances of access to
education, health care, lodging and work as necessary for the free market
dynamics ?
A good example for the choice confronting social scientists can be found in
Serbia, undergoing privatization according to the WB and IMF dictate with
considerable delay in comparison to other former socialist countries. It is the
finding of the 2003 survey of the Institute for sociological research of the
Faculty of the Philosophy, that privatization is completely supported by just
19% of respondents, while the rest of respondents either completely oppose
privatization (22%) or approves only of partial privatization of social
property up to the 49% of the value of social capital or only of small and
middle sized firms (34%). Up to three-quarters of respondents completely
opposes privatization of energy and water systems and public services, contrary
to the law on privatization that imposes obligatory and predominantly external
privatization (Vratusa, V., 2004)..
Such answers of respondents challenge researchers who do not want to place
their expert knowledge in the service of parasitic financial capital’s
counterrevolution, to creatively conceptualize overcoming of deformations of
the collective forms of property after the October revolution, due to the lack
of institutionalized mechanisms of democratic strategic investment and other
social reproduction decisions’ making. Indicatively the same authors that label
every attempt to criticize the sell out of socially produced wealth at rock
bottom prices as ’’conservative blocking’’ of necessary ’’post-socialist
transition’’, simultaneously are the most eager promoters of the functionalist
usage of the social capital concept. Social scientists as part and parcel of
reproduction of social reality they are examining, can not escape the
responsibility for the ethical choice to what use they will put the material
and spiritual resources at their disposal.
References
Bourdieu, P. , 1983 : ’Forms of capital’, J. C. Richards (ed.) Handbook
of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, New York :
Greenwood Press.
Cohen, D., Prusak, L., 2001 : In Good Company. How social capital
makes organizations work, Boston, Ma. : Harvard Business School
Press.214 +xiii pages.
Coleman, J. C. (1988) ’Social capital in the creation of human capital’ American
Journal of Sociology 94 : S95-S120.
Fukuyama Francis, 1989 : "The End of History", The
National Interest, Summer
Fukuyama Francis, 1999 : ’’Social Capital and Civil Society’’
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm
Hanifan, Lyda Judson, 1916 : In the paper ’The rural school community
centre’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
67 : 130-138.
Putnam, R. D. , 1995 : ’Bowling Alone : America’s Declining
Social Capital’, Journal of Democracy 6:1, Jan, 65-78,
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_democracy/v006/putnam
Smith, M. K. (2001) ’Social capital’, The encyclopaedia of informal
education, http://www.infed.org/biblio/social_capital.htm
Soros, DJ., 1999 : Kriza globalnog kapitalizma - ugrozeno otvoreno
drustvo, K.V.S., Beograd
Vratusa, Vera, 2002 : "Globalization of Democratic Participation
and Self-Governance Versus Globalization of Oligopolistic Martkets and
Totalitarianism", Sociology (Sociology, Vol. XLIV, No. 4, 289-314/
Vratusa, Vera, 2004 : ’’Stavovi o privatizaciji u Srbiji krajem XX i
pocetkom XXI veka (Attitudes Toward Privatization in Serbia at the End of XX
and the Beginning of XXI Century", A. Milic, ed. Drustvena
transformacija i strategije drustvenih grupa : svakodnevica Srbije na
pocetku treceg milenijuma (Social Transformation and Strategies of Social
Groups : Everydaylife of Serbia at the Beginning of the Millennium),
Beograd, ISSIFF, ISSBN 86-80269-73-5, 71-110